The Attic (a name which commemorates our first physical location) is, first and foremost, a site for the research students of the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester: a virtual community which aims to include all students, be they campus-based and full-time, or distance-learning and overseas. But we welcome contributions from students of museum studies - and allied subject areas - from outside the School and from around the world. Here you will find a lot of serious stuff, like exhibition and research seminar reviews, conference alerts and calls for papers, but there's also some 'fluff'; the things that inspire, distract and keep us going. After all, while we may be dead serious academic types, we're human too.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Workshop Series: Extreme Collecting

This looks great - I'm hoping to attend the first workshop in December. Anyone else up for that?***

What are the acceptable boundaries for the practice of collecting? How can new strategies in collecting be implemented? Extreme Collecting explores the process of collecting that challenges the bounds of normally acceptable practice.

Through a series of four workshops Extreme Collecting aims to apply a critical approachtowards the rigidity of museums in maintaining essentially 19th century ideas to collecting andmove towards identifying priorities for collection policies in British museums that are inclusive of acquiring 'difficult' objects. Extreme Collecting may apply to the collection ofthose objects supposedly so mundane and mass-produced as to appear uninteresting. Alternatively, it also applies to the collecting of objects that have physical characteristics – ofephemeral substance, size and scale – that make it impossible to acquire and exhibit or areprone to rapid decay. Sustainability of collections is a vital consideration in a world whereinstitutions are dominated by audit culture and by tick box compliance. Addressing these issues we may begin to plan for and manage the museum collections of the future.

A workshop series organised by University College London in cooperation with the British Museum, supported by the AHRC

***STOP PRESS***

PhD Conferences

We have a new PhD conference upcoming this year November 5-6th 2013. It is called Museum Metamorphosis and is all about the adaptable and changing museums of today. We are sponsored by AHRC and in partnership with Leicester Museums. The official website and details can be found here.

Last year's PhD student conference was held March 27-28 2012, and was titled Museum Utopias; it was supported by the University of Leicester and Hanwell. It was an intreguing two days of utopic ideals and realities in museums today. Details are available on the official website. Read the blog for a session-by-session review of the conference.

The 2011 conference was held in Leicester March 28-30, and was called Curiouser & Curiouser; supported financially by the University of Leicester, it was an exciting three days of the weird and wonderful in heritage studies. Read the blog to find out more. We also held a highly successful PhD student symposium in December 2009. Read the blog.